1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to image forming devices and more particularly to a replaceable unit of an image forming device and communication therebetween.
2. Description of the Related Art
In electrophotographic image forming devices, one or more replaceable units may be used to supply consumable material to the device upon installation of the replaceable unit(s) therein. Generally, a replaceable unit communicates with an image forming device certain information for proper operation. In particular, the replaceable unit communicates with the image forming device its country of origin (perhaps for its authentication), geographical location of shipment, its stored consumable material, and/or other settings/information associated with the replaceable unit. This information is often stored in or on the replaceable unit upon its manufacture but some of the information, such as the shipping location, could be changed thereafter in order to adapt to customer demand.
Typically, replaceable unit have a housing forming a reservoir for consumable material and often include consumable material agitators or paddles in the reservoir to fluff and mix consumable material in the reservoir, thereby preventing consumable material from clumping. Agitators and paddles also direct consumable material to an exit port for supplying consumable material to a developer unit of the image forming device. An existing replaceable unit 10 is generally shown in FIG. 1. Replaceable unit 10 has a cylindrically-shaped housing 12 and includes a shaft 14 within a reservoir 13 formed by the housing 12. A molded paddle assembly 16 having paddles A, B, C, D in reservoir 13 is mounted on shaft 14 to agitate and move toner in reservoir 13 toward an outlet of housing 12 as shaft 14 rotates. With replaceable unit 10 in an image forming device, information associated with replaceable unit 10 is communicated to the imaging device using, for example, relatively expensive smart chips and/or memory devices that are mounted on housing 12. With the bottle design of FIG. 1 and other similar designs, these information-storing devices mounted on the bottle housing can be tampered with, hacked or copied.